It's Silent, Not Taciturn
by Twi14
Summary: "Why does no one in the worlds ever go outside anymore?" "Well, Lexaeus,-" "And why are we relying on fifteen year-olds with oversized keys to protect the universe as we know it?" "Look, I thought you were supposed to be the strong silent type-" "And for the love of God, why is the biggest company in Radiant Garden now a hair gel manufacturer?"


It's_ Silent_, Not Taciturn

Taking the cloak was probably a bad idea.

Lord knows the Organization had attracted enough animosity to warrant it. There were more than a few worlds where wearing anything remotely black or hooded would get you shot/stabbed/clawed/laser blasted to within an inch of your life.

Notice he said "life". Others may have insisted on the term "nonexistence" in that previous sentence, but Lexaeus was firmly of the opinion that such vulgarities of grammar only made the members of the Organization sound more melodramatic then they already did. You'd think that they'd start bursting into flames when they got angry or som-

Oh. Right.

Mercifully, there was no one in the lab sufficiently awake enough to ignite, figuratively or not. The founding members of the mighty Organization XIII were passed out in approximately the positions they had been in when Ansem- or Xehanort, or Terra, or whatever he was choosing to call himself these days, had plunged all their hearts into darkness.

Wait, wait. He didn't have to think like that anymore. He could dispense with the corny, elaborate, euphemisms involving darkness and the pain of nonbeing.

_Thank God._

Ahem. The founding members of the mighty Organization XIII were passed out in the positions they had been in when Ansem- or Xehanort, or Terra, or whatever he was choosing to call himself these days, had broken the containment seals on the lab doors, allowing a ravening horde of Neoshadows inside to steal their hearts and then eat their other, less metaphorical hearts.

Lexaeus smiled grimly as he stuffed the cloak in a bag and began rifling through Xaldin's pockets. The Silent Hero may have always been (reasonably) courteous to his fellow organization members, but he also had a long memory. And Xaldin (Or Dilan, or-you know what, forget about it) was notorious for being a tad… unethical with the Organization's munny supply. Rumor had it that he had gotten several members to mortgage _their own weapons _as collateral for the interest rates he charged. Not that he would have been foolish enough to do something like that, of course. He had been sleeping on the floor _completely_ by his own choice.

He found nothing of interest on Xaldin, aside from a suspiciously large number of peanut bags and a tin of lance polish.

Peanuts- that's how bad it had gotten towards the end. Stuck inside the lab for weeks on end, Heartless of their own creation battering at the doors, Even insisting that he was only hours away from a breakthrough while Dilan and Braig fought for the last scraps of food anyone could find. He'd encouraged Ienzo to write to take his mind away from everything, not realizing that he was meticulously tallying how much of Ansem they could eat before they would die from darkness poisoning. The child had _graphs_.

No, he didn't particularly feel guilty about from theft from this wonderful group of sadists.

He was leaving this world (by gummi ship- the dark corridors were horrendously easy to intercept, as Demyx once discovered when he reached in to grab his sitar and accidentally groped Larxene as she portaled out of the shower, and then she- but that is a story for another day.). He was going to find his family, assuming their world was one of the ones that the miscellaneous spiky haired teenagers had saved.

And then he would go and slap Aeleus Sr. in the face for suggesting that he go to Radiant Garden to "do _something_" to help the family pay the bills-no, he wouldn't. He would hug Aaron and apologize for letting a manipulative twelve year-old replace his little brother.

Lexaeus glanced down at Ienzo, slumbering peacefully, looking almost innocent, and softened slightly. He knelt next to him and whispered "You're going to have to do your own fighting from now on." Which was all very well and good, except Ienzo couldn't actually hear him. So he decided to punctuate the point. He drew Skysplitter and carefully drove it into the floor next to Ienzo's head. With any luck, it would be first thing he saw when he woke. With a great deal of luck, the unnaturally sharp blade would stay embedded there, and the scientists would have to continually navigate around a giant ax in the floor.

He walked out of the lab several minutes later; squinting as his eyes frantically attempted to remember what "sunlight" was and failed miserably. As such, his planned triumphant march out the door was more of a stagger, which abruptly turned into a fall-down several flights of stairs-after he tripped over the door frame.

But as the enormous man got up with a surprising amount of grace and continued his ponderous way down the street, some say that there was a small smile tugging at the edge of his lips.

_Good morning, Radiant Garden._


End file.
